


offerings

by lisbethsalamanders



Series: you anchor me [2]
Category: Halt and Catch Fire
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, F/F, Fluff, Implied/Referenced Abortion, Light Angst, Not Canon Compliant, Unresolved Romantic Tension, cause if i need them cuddling someone else out there must too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-18
Updated: 2017-05-18
Packaged: 2018-11-02 05:16:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10937766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lisbethsalamanders/pseuds/lisbethsalamanders
Summary: Cameron keeps Donna company after their trip to Planned Parenthood in "10Broad36".





	offerings

**Author's Note:**

> i'm in love with the idea of cam taking care of donna for once in her life and i'm so obsessed with season 2 that this popped into my head and wouldn't go away sooooooo
> 
> yeah yeah i kno at some point in the episode gordon calls her and has her sing haley to sleep over the phone after the abortion yada yada yada canon doesn't matter these two are in love the end
> 
> (also the rainbow mug from season 3 makes an appearance because i am the person i am)

Donna doesn’t talk much after the nurses say she’s free to go, just polite thank yous and agreements that she’ll be back in two weeks to make sure everything’s healing properly. Cameron stands near the door chewing on her thumbnail and jiggling her foot. She hadn’t thought to take her Walkman and she’s spent the past two hours reading and rereading women’s health pamphlets, even running into the bathroom at one point to strip to the waist and check her breasts for lumps. She wants out. 

Donna’s slow walking to the truck and Cameron doesn’t need to ask how she’s feeling. She presses her forehead against the glass of the passenger side as they make their way into the suburbs and Cameron tries her best to avoid potholes, not wanting to give her a concussion along with everything else.

She parks along the curb outside the Clark’s house. It’s past midnight and there’s a loneliness to the house, the whole block even, that unnerves Cameron. She wants to run from it, but the thought of Donna all alone in that darkness makes her ask, “You want me to stay?”

Donna lifts her head and shakes it. “No, I’ll be okay. Thanks, though.” But she doesn’t open the door. 

They sit in the silence for a moment before Cameron says, “I really don’t wanna go back to Mutiny tonight. It’s gonna be chaos and I - I can’t deal with that right now.” She grins sheepishly. “So, _can_ I stay?” 

She’s happy to see that Donna’s well enough to roll her eyes before stepping out onto the sidewalk and beckoning her towards the house. Cameron hops from the car and runs through the front door before Donna’s fully opened it, switching on every light she can see and making Donna chuckle. “I’m gonna go change and grab some sheets for the couch.” She looks Cameron up and down. “You want some - not jeans to sleep in?” 

Cameron nods, happy she doesn’t have to ask. “You want me to make you tea or something? I can do that!”

“Sure, that’d be nice.” 

Cameron drops her things and bolts into the kitchen. There’s a kettle already on the stove and she knows you’re supposed to fill that with water but the stove is electric, not gas like she’s used to, and she’s still fiddling with the knobs when Donna walks in and reaches over her to turn on the correct burner. “Sorry,” she mumbles as Donna, now in sweatpants and slippers, pulls a box of chamomile from the cupboard. 

“Don’t worry, I can take it from here. Go get comfortable, I’ll be there in a sec.” Cameron nods and heads to the couch, spreading the white linen sheets over the cushions and kicking off her shoes to very quickly slip off her jeans and pull on the plaid pajama pants sitting there for her. They’re small, the bottom edges flapping against her shins, but it’s a nice gesture. To her surprise, Donna brings her over a rainbow covered mug full of tea before settling into an armchair with her own and pulling her knees to her chest. 

“I haven’t had tea in... Jesus, I don’t know if I ever drank herbal tea.” Cameron stares at the dark yellow liquid and sniffs. She takes a tentative sip, careful not to burn her tongue, and grimaces. “Yeah, not for me.”

“Sticking with coffee?”

“And orange soda.”

“Ah, of course.” Donna holds her own mug in both hands and closes her eyes. 

The silence that follows is friendly, undemanding. Cameron watches the Felix the Cat clock above the TV tick, its eyes a metronome. Once and awhile she glimpses over at Donna, who’s breathing in the steam from her tea but not drinking. She never really looks at Donna, she realizes. They spend so much time together that there’s parts of her she doesn’t think about anymore, like that distinctive mole above her lips or how red her hair gets when the lamp light shines on it. Or, she remembers with some guilt tugging at her chest, how beyond stressed she’s been over the past couple weeks. She promises herself to look more, to ask more, to maybe try and notice more.

Donna yawns after some time, opening her eyes and smiling faintly at Cameron. “I think I’m gonna go to bed. You can stay up, watch TV, whatever you want.”

“No, no, I’m tired, too.” Cameron pulls the blanket Donna had lain next to the sheets over her shoulders for emphasis. “I’ll see you in the morning?”

Donna nods, standing with her mug. “Yeah, goodnight.”

“‘Night.”

 

She hasn’t slept somewhere this quiet since hunkering down in the Cardiff basements. Quiet is maddening, way worse than a bunch of boys up at all hours of the night throwing things and yelling. Somewhere far off there’s a dog barking and once in a while headlights pass, but that’s all. And the house is dark but not quite pitch, the kind of half night only the suburbs can create. Light spills in from streetlamps and porch lights, making her eyelids itch. Her mind wanders to unpleasant places when it’s too quiet: the awful things she screamed at Donna not forty-eight hours ago, whether or not her company would even exist come morning, her sick luck that she’s never had to make the decision Donna just did, whatever pain and exhaustion Donna must be feeling right now, the house she grew up in not unlike this one where her mother screamed and she felt the absence of her father in every corner. This is what quiet brings. This is why she hates it.

She would swear it’s been hours but her friend Felix tells her only forty-three minutes have passed when she kicks the tangled blanket from her legs and gets up. She pads on socked feet through the carpeted halls until she finds the one closed door in the house. She opens it slowly, hearing every click and whir of the knob until she can peek inside.

Donna is a lump on the bed facing away, her knees curled up to her chest and her breathing not quite even. The mug sits, still full, on the bedside table next to her. When she doesn’t turn, Cameron opens the door further and inches inside.

It’s darker in her bedroom, the curtains closed tight against the backyard. Feeling the loud, angry thoughts fading into the background already, she climbs in next to her. 

Donna shifts, turning her head and eyeing Cameron through heavy lids. “Are you feeling okay?” Cameron whispers, pulling the comforter up around her chin. “I couldn’t sleep.”

Donna lets out a soft sigh and turns onto her back. “Me neither, but I’m okay. The cramps hurt, but they told me that would happen.” 

Cameron feels a pang in her chest. She was never good at this, at making others feel better, but she knows what helps her. Gulping down any hesitancy, she says, “Well, I mean, the one thing that helps when I have cramps is if someone rubs my stomach.” She pauses, searching Donna’s face for comprehension. “Do you, um, want me to do that?” There’s nothing for a moment and the thought that she’s crossing some line flits into her brain, but Donna’s nodding and turning back onto her side before she can start to feel too weird. Inching towards her, she presses her forehead against the back of Donna’s neck and her hand against Donna’s abdomen. Donna’s soft and warm and smells faintly like some kind of flower, gardenias maybe. She presses her hand to the waistband of Donna’s sweatpants and begins to massage just below it, to the tense muscles of her midriff.

Closing her eyes, she feels a calm settle over her. How long has it been since she was curled up with someone like this? Tom always sleeps at home and she’d call what she used to do at Joe’s apartment more passing out than anything else. Before that had been tiny twin beds in dorm rooms that her feet hung off of, so definitely not there. She’s avoided it, preferring to sleep alone in loud places, but this is nice. This is comfortable. There’s no pressure here, just company. She likes a lot about this: the squishy mattress, the calm in her brain, the way Donna’s muscles tangibly relax beneath her fingers. This is good. Really good.

After a little she notices a shift in Donna’s breathing. It’s shallower and uneven, strangely so. “Hey, what’s up?” she says, opening her eyes as Donna rolls over. Cameron sees the tears on her cheeks and a thick knot forms in her stomach. She can’t do tears. She has no idea how to deal with tears.

“Thanks. For everything.” Cameron feels the knot loosen a bit as Donna wraps her arms around her and buries her face in the crook of her neck. Okay, not so bad. This she can do. She can hold Donna and rub her back while she cries softly into her t-shirt. She even begins to doze after a while, nuzzling her nose into Donna’s scalp. Her subconscious creeps into dominance and begins to wander. Cameron follows it to an apartment rented with Gordon’s money where he’s not allowed to set foot, where she and Donna can work with no phones ringing, no complaints from irate teenagers who are too dumb to figure out her riddles in Parallax, no fucking West Group. Donna can build and she can invent and they can do whatever they dream up and yell at each other without fear of the other leaving and never worry about costs or subscriber numbers and they can fall asleep there sometimes, just like this, tangled beneath comfy sheets with Donna smelling and feeling so good that it makes her ache, makes her want to wake her with a hand between her thighs and lips on her neck and a morning so perfect she never thinks about Gordon or this pain ever again and she’s safe and Donna’s safe and she’s here and Donna’s here and things are going to be okay as long as they stay like this, curled up together, safe safe safe safe safe…. 

 

The sound of the shower wakes her hours later. Cameron groans, opening one eye to peer out into the bedroom. A shaft of sunlight shines through the break in the curtains. She’ll have to get up soon, make her way out to the truck and schlep into Mutiny, preferably before Gordon and the girls get home, but not just yet. She’d slept well, any dreams or sleep ideas fading into the morning and she wants to savor it. The shower shuts off and Cameron rolls to face the bathroom door as Donna opens it.

A wave of damp air floats into the room and yep, definitely gardenias. Donna’s wearing a light blue terry cloth bathrobe and her auburn hair hangs wet below her shoulders. She seems smaller than usual, no shoes or hairdo or makeup. She’s still pale and has dark circles beneath her eyes, but she’s brighter than the night before. She looks like Donna with no guards up and something rushes towards Cameron, some tall wave of emotion that makes her nearly jump from the bed and scoop Donna into her arms. 

Donna squeezes her hair through a towel and smiles. The feeling crashes hard over Cameron and she’s drowning in it, she can’t breathe. “Do you want to shower?” Donna asks. “I bet it’s nicer here than back at the house.” 

“No, I’m - I’m good.” Cameron pulls herself from beneath the covers, shaken by this very unexpected development. “I should get going, I don’t want Gordon to think - I mean - yeah, I should go.” 

Donna’s smile falters for a second, but it’s so brief a movement Cameron thinks she may have imagined it. “Okay. Well, I’ll see you later then. I might take the morning, if that’s okay.”

“Yeah! Yeah, of course, whatever.” Cameron almost bolts towards the door, then pauses. Taking a deep breath, she zips to Donna’s side and plants a kiss on her cheek before running into the hallway and out of the house. It’s not until she’s halfway to Mutiny does she realize she’s still wearing Donna’s pajama pants.


End file.
